McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson, hired an private company last year to purchase defective pain relievers in a “phantom recall” across stores nationwide instead of issuing a recall for the 88,000 Motrin IB 8ct vials.

The 2009 recall of Motrin IB 8ct vials came only after federal officials pressed McNeil/J&J to issue a recall after an information sheet was dropped by one of the contractors in a store.

This startling revelation was discovered during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Thursday on J&J’s handling of its latest recall of children’s medicine.

Representative Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked who at McNeil and Johnson & Johnson knew about this scheme. “How high up in the corporate suite was this scheme hatched?”

The forced 2009 Motrin recall was the first of four for McNeil/J&J in the past year, with April’s recall of 136 million bottles of infant and children’s Tylenol, Motrin, Benadryl and Zyrtec the largest to date in FDA history. There have been over 700 complaints regarding the medicine, with at least 30 deaths reported through May. The FDA is investigating the claims.

The last time McNeil/J&J faced such a public relations nightmare was the fall of 1982, when seven people died in Chicago when Extra-Strength Tylenol capsules were found to be laced with cynaide – up to 10,000 times the lethal human dose.

Johnson & Johnson’s PR efforts are documented in every beginning public relations textbook on how to properly manage such an enormous crisis and respond efficiently with truth. Entry-level students can tell you about the Johnson & Johnson cyanide case and how it changed public relations.

Johnson & Johnson set the stage for properly mitigating a product disaster. Customer safety was put first, before profit and other financial concerns. Rather than deny any association with the tampered bottles, Johnson & Johnson immediately alerted consumers to stop all use of Tylenol product. They stopped production. The stopped advertising. And they recalled all Tylenol capsules from the market – a recall of 31 million bottles.

Apparently the same experts who handled that case have retired and those in charge never took a public relations course or opened their textbook.

In a matter of a month, Johnson & Johnson have completely destroyed that which they built up in 1982. A brand that was trustworthy – that no matter what the cost, consumer safety came first.

For a company that is used as an example of how to issue a recall properly while putting consumer safety first, to quietly pay contractors to go out across the United States and purchase the remaining bottles on the shelf – we’re in a different time with different rules.

Johnson & Johnson’s actions show the need for more transparent recalls and an ease for consumers to get the information they want and need fast.